Charlie Loses His Memory AU
by Disgarded
Summary: This is the first part of another story I'd toyed with writing, but never wrote. It's AU in that it ignores anything after Goblet of Fire, and assumes the main characters went on to have normal adult lives rather than all marrying each other. Heh.


**The Charlie-Loses-His-Memory-AU **

White.

That was the first thing he noticed. It took him a few seconds to process what he was looking at, but then he realized it was a ceiling. That, of course, led to the discovery that he was, in fact, lying in a bed. He probably should have been more disturbed by this than he was, but he felt a sort of total lethargy and couldn't bring himself to be bothered by much of anything.

He may have stared at the ceiling for a while, but he couldn't be sure how long because attempting to catalogue time was too much effort. So, after a several slow blinks he began to look around a little more. In one corner of the ceiling was a cluster of brightly colored balloons – those captured his attention for a while. Though he couldn't feel a breeze, there must have been some sort of air current up near the ceiling because he noticed the orange and red balloons near the top of the cluster seemed to be jockeying for position as the top balloon. As they rubbed against each other slightly, first the red one would be slightly higher, then the orange, and on it went. He found himself rooting for the orange one – he liked orange, he decided.

His musings were interrupted by a woman who seemed to suddenly appear beside his bed. She seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see her, and she immediately began speak softly to him as her hands fluttered this way and that, adjusting his blankets and tapping on various surfaces with a wand she produced from the folds of her robe.

He had no idea what she was doing, and couldn't even make out most of what she said, but again, just like with everything else, he couldn't seem to bring himself to care. His eyes popped open and he found himself staring at the ceiling again before he'd even realized he'd closed them. The woman was gone, as far as he could tell, and he was tired, so he closed his eyes again – deliberately this time – and slept.

The next time he woke up he felt a bit more alert. Where before everything had seemed distant and rather detached from him, now things felt a bit more normal. The white ceiling was still there to greet his eyes, but before he could check on the balloons, he noticed a person sitting on a chair pulled up to his bed. Maybe sitting was the wrong word, though. This person was slumped over to one side, their entire upper body weight balanced on a single fist that was held up by an elbow perched on the arm of the chair. It seemed a rather dangerous position to rest in, he thought. He decided he should probably warn the person, but when he opened his mouth to do just that, all he managed to get out sounded more like a croak than actual words.

The woman must have heard him, though, because she startled and her elbow slipped off the arm of the chair, her head dipping, then raising again as her eyes popped open. "CHARLIE, DEAR! You're awake!"

She seemed very happy to see him, but he couldn't help but cringe a little at the volume of her voice. She must have noticed because she immediately sat up and became much quieter, speaking to him softly while one hand went immediately to the top of his head and the other to his nearest hand.

"It's been ages, Charlie! Don't ever do that again, you hear! Your poor mother can't take it!"

He frowned, wondering what he'd done wrong. He searched his mind for something, but all he could recall was staring at the ceiling and watching the balloons in the corner. He didn't remember doing anything that would upset his mother.

In fact, now that he thought about it, it occurred to him that he wasn't exactly sure who his mother was, or even who he was for that matter. For some reason, that discovery made him want to get up and do something about it – so he tried to do just that. But as soon as he moved to sit up, he felt pain that hadn't been there before. His shoulder, his chest… his whole body just ached in a way that made him not want to move again. Of course, the woman beside him explained something about him lying still and resting, but she was going on and on about all sorts of things, and he'd stopped listening the moment she'd mentioned his mother and set him on his current thought process.

Finally he decided to break in, as he laid back with a wince. He cleared his throat and croaked, "Am I Charlie, then?"

Well that shut the woman up. She actually looked afraid suddenly, and he wondered if he'd gotten it all wrong. He tried again, "You called me Charlie, right? Is that my name?"

Then the woman whimpered and patted him gently on the head saying "I'll be right back, dear." And before he could say anything else she scurried from the room.

Only a few minutes later an older man came in – he had white hair and kind eyes, and glasses that sat perched right on the edge of his nose.  
>"Are you having problems with your memory, young man?" the older man asked without preamble.<p>

"I'm not sure," he responded carefully. "I guess – I can't remember anything but the ceiling, and those balloons," he finished, gesturing vaguely to the corner with a single finger.

"Do you remember anything before you woke up here?" the older man wanted to know now.

"I – I don't think so." He wracked his brain for something.

Then the man proceeded to ask him questions. He asked him his name, his birthday, who his family was, where he'd gone to school, where he worked, and even things like favorite colors and foods, and to each question he drew a complete blank.

The older man nodded as if he'd expected it. "I'm Healer Lancing," he explained, "you were in a bit of an accident, and it looks like it's affecting your memory. Don't worry about it, though. I'm sure it'll all come back to you in time."

He wanted to know more, but he found himself getting tired again. He tried to fight it, but the healer told him to rest and sleep, and so he did.

* * *

><p>Hermione leaned over to retrieve the large volume on the counter next to her, and flipped it open. Skipping through the pages, she finally found the rune she was looking for, and began to meticulously copy it onto the sheet of parchment before her. She didn't even look up at the sound of the bell over the door tinkling. Whoever had come in would probably need a few moments to browse anyway.<p>

She looked up, though, when she had the unmistakable sensation of eyes on her.

"Oh, Ron! What are you doing here?" she exclaimed happily. Now that he worked at the ministry, she only saw him every few weeks. She was about invite him out to lunch, when she stopped to actually take in her friend's appearance. "What's wrong, Ron?"

Ron pinned her with red-rimmed eyes. "Something's happened to Charlie, Hermione. He's at St. Mungo's."

Hermione felt shock at the news, and immediate sympathy for Ron. She'd only met Charlie a handful of times, but she knew that Ron had always looked up to his older brother. She stepped around the counter to give him a fierce hug. "Oh Ron, what happened? Is he okay?"

"Dunno." Ron answered glumly. "Just got a firecall from Mum letting me know he was at St. Mungo's, and I came here. She wants me to come down."

Hermione understood. With Harry off doing Auror work in Bulgaria, their trio was down to two. Ron had always depended on his friends in time of need and something like this – that had the potential to be so upsetting, was something he needed his friends for. If it turned out to be something serious, they'd probably have to see about contacting Harry – Ron would need his best friend.

"I'll go with you, Ron." He didn't even have to ask. She understood at once that that is why he'd come. At one time it seemed that nearly everyone had thought the two of them would end up together, and they'd both considered it – though separately. Hermione had thought about it during their fifth year, before realizing that they made much better friends than they'd make anything else. Ron had later confessed that he'd considered asking her to the sixth year dance, but he'd come to the same conclusion. Though whether that had to do with his own working it out, or the fact that Lavender had asked him, he wouldn't say. In either case, the two of them had come to realize that they were the best of friends, but would never be anything more. After school Hermione had gone on to pursue a study of enchantments and curses involving runes, and Ron had taken a low-level job at the ministry. They didn't see each other as often as they had in school, but they were more than happy to get together with Harry on holidays, and every few weeks for drinks at a local pub.

Ron waited while Hermione stashed her books under the counter, rolled up her parchments, and grabbed her coat. She flipped the open sign to "closed" on her way out, stopping to lock the door behind her.

"Don't you have to tell Dottie you closed?" Ron asked, as they stepped out into the street.

"She'll know," Hermione answered. Dottie was the owner and manager of Runes and Relics, and though she almost never appeared in the store herself, she had an uncanny way of always knowing what was going on there. Hermione suspected she had her own set of security spells, though she'd yet been able to discover them.

The headed to the nearest pub that had a fireplace, and transported themselves to St. Mungo's.


End file.
